In what has become known as The Information Age, computer use is an everyday part of our lives. Naturally, innovators and developers are engaged in a never-ending quest to provide new and improved ways in which computers can be used. In one such innovation, software and hardware have been developed that allow a computer to hear, and actually understand, words spoken aloud by a user. Such systems are generally referred to as speech recognition or voice recognition systems, and are currently available on the market.
Speech/voice recognition systems generally do one of two things with recognized words or phrases. First, the system may treat the spoken words or phrases as a dictation, transcribing the spoken words or phrases into text for insertion into, for example, a word processing document. Such a system would allow a user to create a document, such as a letter, by speaking aloud the letter's desired contents. Second, the system may treat the spoken words or phrases as commands or instructions, which are then carried out by the user's computer. For example, some speech recognition systems allow a user, who is dictating a letter, to orally instruct the computer to delete or replace a previously-spoken word or phrase.
If a system is to accept both dictation and commands from the user, there needs to be a way for the computer to recognize whether a spoken word is to be treated as a dictation and transcribed, or as a command and carried out. For example, a user who repeats the phrase “delete the last word” might intend to add the phrase “delete the last word” to a document he or she is dictating, or the user might actually want to delete the previous word from a document. In commercially-available systems that offer dictation and command modes a user can give the computer an indication as to whether a spoken word or phrase is to be treated as a command or dictation. This indication is often done through use of the computer keyboard, which can often have over 100 keys, and may use keys such as the “CTRL” or “SHIFT” keys for controlling command or dictation. Other keys or physical switches are then used to control the on/off state of the microphone. For example, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking® speech recognition program, offered by Dragon Systems, Inc., allows users to use keyboard accelerator commands such that one key (e.g., the CTRL or SHIFT) might be used to inform the system that spoken words are to be treated as dictation, while another key informs the computer to instruct spoken words as commands. In use, the user simply presses one of these keys to switch between dictation and command “modes,” while another key press or switch is used to activate or deactivate the microphone.
These existing speech recognition systems, however, have heretofore been designed with certain assumptions about the user's computer. To illustrate, the example described above assumes that a user has a fully-functional keyboard with alphabet keys. Other systems may use onscreen graphical controls for operation, but these systems assume that a user has a pointing device (e.g., a mouse, stylus, etc.) available. Such speech recognition systems are problematic, however, when they are implemented on a user's computer where such user input capabilities are unavailable or undesirable. For example, a portable device (e.g., handheld personal data assistant, etc.) might not always have a full keyboard, mouse, or stylus available. In order to use these existing speech recognition systems on such devices, a user might be required to attach an external keyboard and/or mouse to his or her portable device, complicating the user's work experience and inconveniencing the user. Furthermore, the separate control of the microphone on/off state is often cumbersome. Accordingly, there is an existing need for a more efficient speech recognition system that allows for simplified control by the user.